


Public Visitation

by YellowWomanontheBrink



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, Melodrama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowWomanontheBrink/pseuds/YellowWomanontheBrink
Summary: After nine years in prison for crimes against sentient beings, Anakin Skywalker is on parole.A slave his whole life, he thought bitterly. First to the Hutts, who owned his body, then the Jedi, who owned his mind, then the Republic, who owned everything he was and everything he would be.At least Padme had the children.They would never belong to anyone but themselves.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 51





	1. Anakin

**Author's Note:**

> I fucked my life up, so here's melodrama up the wazoo while I go dry weep myself to sleep.

Anakin pumped his leg, shaking the table. The booth was too small. His knees pressed against the cool steel. The smell of the diner was overwhelming, and tension in the Force made his ears ring.

The Padawan who was responsible for overseeing the Force during his probationary meetings sat unobtrusively in the corner. His presence was perfunctory, and entirely for the comfort of the social worket who would be arriving with his children. Being who he was, and in peak physical shape besides, there was no way he could overpower Anakin, and especially not if he touched the Dark Side.

Not that Anakin ever would. Never again.

His thigh cramped. He immediately started tapping the table instead. The waitress, a pretty young twilek with a heavy Corellian accent, kept nervously looking back at him. He didn't doubt that she knew who he was. Everyone who knew anything about the galaxy at large knew who he was. Who could forget the face of their fallen hero, enemy of the Republic number one?

Certainly, he never forgot the face of his enemies, their signature in the Force etched on his brain like a twisted mockery of carved japor. A talisman of remembrance of all the things he hated the most.

A sharp prod in the Force from the Padawan. Undaunted, Anakin glared at him, his lip curled in disgust.

A slave his whole life, he thought bitterly. First to the Hutts, who owned his body, then the Jedi, who owned his mind, then the Republic, who owned everything he was and everything he would be.

At least Padme had the children.

They would never belong to anyone but themselves.

He couldn't suppress the feelings that overwhelmed him at the thought; pure elation and terror battled for dominance in him. To see them, like this, as a caged animal on a leash would be introduced to a spectator at a zoo, was humiliating. To see them was a pure joy.

Ignoring the flinch of the waitress at his sudden movement, and brushing off the forceful but pitiful efforts of the Padawan, Anakin pulled a flimsiplast reel from his robes.

As part of his rehabilitation, Anakin had earned the privilege to receive update flimsiplasts on his children, and letters from Padme.

The first was of the twins, uncomfortably posed, at age four. They wore white robes, long haired and with wide, flared sleeves that concealed their tiny hands. 

Leia had the dark eyes and hair of Padme, without the delicate, doll-like beauty. Even as a baby, her expression had been unfazed.

Luke was looking at Leia, pale eyes wide. His mouth was half open, as if he was caught mid-word. A blush was high on his cheeks and his eyes were wet with burgeoning tears.

Every year, he received one flimsiplast, just like the first.

He had never seen his children smile.

As for the letters, Padme had declined to contact him.

His stomach twisted, heat rising in his ears. He had to hold the flimsiplast reel with one hand, careful not to wrinkle it.

His prosthetic gouged trenches in the cheap plastisteel with a shrill screech.

The waitress abandoned the table she was clearing and fled to the backroom, but Anakin didn't notice, because instantly, he was entrances by the light.

The Force had never before felt so pure.

He couldn't believe that something so wonderful was his.

His grin was broad, and when he stood, he towered over the back of the booth, just in time to see the social worker turn the corner with his children.

She was a Mon Cala, and grippes their shoulders tensely, pulling them back behind her at the sight of him.

Struggling to keep his affable smile from morphing into a grimace, he stepped out from the booth.

Right into a lit, green lightsaber. The Padawan stood on the table.

"Down boy," he sneered, "no reunion hugs for war criminals."

Grinding his teeth, his mouth twisting in throttled rage.

But he would die if he couldn't speak to his children, so he sat.

"Good morning, Mr. Skywalker," she burbled, ushering the children into the booth, the padawan sliding in afterward. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that you must abide by all the rules of your parole if you want such privileges to continue."

His lips twisted, a savage smile utterly without humor.

"I won't use the Force," Anakin said lowly. "The Force uses me at its will. I am its humble servant."

Anakin was never humble a day in his life. The Mon Cala pursed her fishy lips.

"You will have one hour. Padawan Nuyeda will be present to protect the children from any...undue influence. You will not..."

Her voice faded out, and if she said anything worth, the Force would let him know.

But by the Force, they were tiny. Anakin was a monolithic man of his own right, and it was a wonderfully cruel irony that there was little enough of him in his own children.

Luke was small, and Leia even smaller. Both their Force signatures reminded him more of Padme than him--deep waters over a churning, burning, tumultuous furnace. Luke was the swirling eddy before a waterfall, and Leia the thunderous spray when they hit the bottom. Unpredictable, and deceptively weathering.

Luke fidgeted restlessly, and his soft boots brushed Anakin's calf.

The Force roiled in the sunstorm of Anakin's emotions.

"Do you agree to these terms?"

A serene smile, one worthy of the Jedi Master he should've been.

"Yes Master Towleit," he said, as obediently impertinent as he'd ever been. "Can we begin now?"

"As you will," she sneered. "Keep an eye on this one, Nuyeda."

Anakin didn't listen to the reply, the serene mask gradually morphing into a genuine smile.

"You're perfect," he breathed.

Luke wrung his hands nervously, but he offered a sweet, bright smile. It was the first time he had ever seen it, and Anakin's heart pounded so fast he feared it would beat out of his chest. Leia kicked Luke's leg and frowned obstinately.

But he could feel their curiosity swirling in the shallows of the Force, so the emotions must have run deep.

"My name is Anakin Skywalker," he reached his flesh hand over the table, an offering and a invitation in one. "I'm your father."

  
  
  



	2. Luke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, it's a WIP not a series.  
> You guys motivated me to update quick. Expect this story to be non linear and updated irregularly.

_"Did they send you break me?" He laughed._ _"They should have sent Windu."_

_"Mace Windu is dead."_

_"Hopefully the Republic and the Jedi with them."_

_"...was it all a lie, Darth?"_

_"The only lies I've ever told were the ones the Jedi told me. Peace is a lie, just like the Republic's justice."_

_"You never could live without a Master could you? You couldn't let go of me, or Padme, so now you look for the Sith to rule you."_

_"You do not know a thing Obi-Wan!"_

_"How long were you working for him? All that talk about justice, freedom-a lie to cover up your Master's hard work?"_

_"Don't get sanctimonious with me Obi-Wan. Don't try to defend an entity content to buy their savior like chattel to me."_

_"Your grief excuses nothing, and hardly explains the depravity of your actions."_

_Obi-Wan slid a picture through the meal slat. Anakin wished he could see his face. He wanted him dead._

_"What the hell is this?" He asked when he caught sight of the flimsi._ _It was the actualization of his nightmares._

_Padme lay on the table like a corpse. Her bulging eyes were half open, the sclera reddened, her lips blue and cracked. Her swollen tongue parted them. Her skin was grey, purple and red; a spectrum of color like the dead. Dried tears left white tracts of salt on her cheeks down to her ears. Dark bruises collared her neck in an indefinable shape. Blood stained the sheet between her splayed legs._

_"What is this?" Anakin whispered. "What is this?!"_

_He slammed himself bodily into the door. The Force churned, cold, but his rage couldn't warm him. The furnace of feeling the Dark Side had conquered sputtered weakly to life._ _If the cold slab of steel and spigot weren't nailed down, they would have shuddered and shook in time with his agony._

_"NO. I stopped this! I saved her! I saved them all!"_

_"You can't handle the sight of your own handiwork, Darth?"_

_"You did this," he hissed, "I saved her."_

_"She begged me to save you," Obi-Wan roared, "I should have killed you, Darth. You aren't worth the name your Master gave you."_

_"YOU DID THIS! YOU KILLED HER. YOU TURNED HER AGAINST ME!" Anakin pounded on the door until his fists were bloody. Padme's picture haunted him. Her bloody, sightless eyes stared damningly at him from where the flimsiplast lay. "She loved me. She understood. She understood that my power was going to save her, and my baby. I had one more task, and then I would have been strong enough to save her. But you stopped me. You did this."_

" _You're weak, Darth," Obi-Wan sneered. "You were only ever strong enough to murder a defenseless pregnant woman."_

* * *

"He's not our dad," Leia snapped after the visit. "Dad is our dad."

It was easy enough for Leia to say. She was wanted. Bail loved her, and Breha loved her, and Sola and Pooja and Ryoo loved her.

Only Obi-Wan wanted him, but Obi-Wan was a Jedi. Jedi didn't have families. Mother cried when he asked if he could be a Jedi, so Luke had told him no.

Sometimes, when he really focused, he thought he could feel the Force. Certainly he felt more than Leia.

It was nothing really. A feeling, a hunch. He was the fastest in the footraces at the palace, and he always knew when Mother was hurting before Leia did. Locks and droids and concrete things were easier than people. Only his sister made sense to him, and he thanked the Force every day, even when she was more annoying than helpful, like she was now.

If Obi-Wan hadn't come, he never would've known it was the Force. Once he knew, he couldn't unknow, and the thought haunted him.

Everyone in the Palace knew who their father and mother were. It was embarrassing, and the other children were cruel and fearful in equal measure.

Mother didn't mean it, but she was afraid too. Luke didn't think she knew he knew it, but it hurt every time the two of them went to her villa for visitation.

Luke remembered the first time he saw a picture of his father. They were four, and Leia had grabbed his hand and pulled him into their secret room.

* * *

"Luke, did you hear about Auntie Sola?"

Of course Luke knew about Auntie Sola. No one could stop talking about it-not that anyone talked to Luke. But she was a bright woman who laughed a lot and picked Luke up and gave him shura sweets.

"Yeah, she's really nice," Luke lay on his bellie and kicked his legs. "I think I still have one of her candies."

"No, I heard she's going to take us to our real mommy!"

Luke frowned. "Mommy is our mommy."

"I heard her say a lady named Padme is our mommy, and Shitbag is our daddy and we have to take a picture for them."

The thought had distressed Luke so much he had cried all the way through the photoshoot, and the drive to the villa, even though being in speeders usually excited him.

The only thing that had made Luke stop were two pictures; a broad-shouldered man in black as pitch Jedi robes, with long blonde hair and Luke's blue eyes. The second was of a gentle looking woman lounged on a chaise, elaborate hair that would put the most extravagant of Breha's styles to shame, and a round, sweet face.

"This is your Mother and Father," Auntie Sola said, wiping his eyes. "Are you ready to say hello?"

* * *

Bail and Breha, as he called them now, though Leia still called them fondly Mama and Dad, had met them there and explained, as best as could be explained to a couple of four year olds.

Mother was wonderful, even if she wasn't there at first.

She had laughed when Luke asked who Shitbag was, and why he wasn't there.

His father's name was Anakin Skywalker. Sola didn't like him. Padme married him when she was 25, and he had done something very evil. She showed him their wedding flimsis, and Luke loved him immediately. He first saw himself in his father's dimples-the shared all three, and the same crooked grin.

What made Luke mad was the fact that Leia seemed unwilling to give their father the same opportunity for reconcilliation as she gave Padme. Breha loved her, and she still accepted Padme as mother, even though she left them. So why did she get so mad at Anakin?

"Bail is your dad," he snapped, kicking his legs in the back seat of the speeder. "I just live with him."

Her face softened. "You really believe that Luke?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "I don't want to talk about it."

She sat primly, like the perfect princess she was. "Well fine. But I'm not going back. I don't want to, he's nothing to me. You hear that, Madame Towleit? I'm not coming again."

"Why are you like this?" He sighed, but even he couldn't smother his smile completely. That was Leia, utterly fearless. She made it easy to be brave.

"You love me for it," she smirked, anger easily forgotten.

"But Leia, really, I don't understand. What do you have against him?"

Anakin had been perfectly kind. His presence was inimitable, and Luke could feel it from even outside the diner. It was like lying under a warmed weighted blanket. The feeling was incomparable to any Jedi Luke had ever felt, not Obi-Wan, or Master Yoda, or Knight Jarrus.

It had passed like a blur, a holovid on fast forward. He never knew a standard hour was so short.

"I'm your father," he had said, and offered a large and calloused hand. Luke had been timid, Leia, obstinate.

"I've been away," his voice clear and warm, as warm and all encompassing as his presence in the Force. "Do you know why?"

Leia said nothing. Luke fidgeted. "Mother said you'd done bad things," he finally said.

"Evil things," Leia interjected. "They put evil people in prison, where they belong. I don't know who let something like you out."

Luke frowned. Leia was often sharp, but not cruel. Not like this.

Anakin was calm, though he did stop smiling. "Yes, I was in prison. Did she tell you I was a Jedi?"

"Obi-Wan told me," Luke couldn't meet his pale eyes, identical to the ones he saw every day in the mirror, so instead he stared at his neck. "He said you were his padawan. His...student."

"Obi-Wan...is..." His face twisted, "I don't want to talk about Obi-Wan. I want to talk about you."

"Why don't you talk about Mother," Leia snapped. "And what you did to her."

Anakin sighed bitterly. "Well you're a real piece of work. You must have given Obi-Wan nightmares. You sound exactly like me, if better. That's probably all Padme."

"I'm nothing like you," she said, but she stuttered. She couldn't meet his eyes either. He looked at Luke and smiled. Luke hesistantly smiled back. He didn't quite know how to feel.

"I'll tell you about your mother," he said after a long pause. "I knew she was mine from the first moment I saw her. She was an angel, my savior-the presence most lovely in the desert-"

"Water," Luke said.

"Very good," Anakin turned his palm up. "Yes, her signature in the Force was like water. More precious than gold, more pure than light. When I met her again, nine years later, we married. She was mine, and I hers."

"She's not a thing to be owned, she's a person!"

Anakin laughed, heartily and genuine. Luke wondered why, because Leia was mad, scary mad.

"She's my angel," Anakin sighed, and leaned back. "And I've spent the last nine years of my life trying to become someone she won't hate, because I surely do not deserve her love. Everything I've ever done is because I love your mother."

Before Anakin could withdraw his hand fully, Luke leaned forward and grabbed it. The look of wonder on his face made Luke's face flush, and his real father gripped it like a lifeline.

His whole life, Luke had felt like a cuckoo in the nest. Bail and Breha didn't love him. Mother did, but she loved him at arm's length.

Whatever his father had done, there was good in him. How else could there be such a pure and whole love under all this turmoil?

Luke could feel it.

When they arrived back at the intergalactic port, Leia was still nagging the social worker.

"Please, please, please Madame Towleit, I don't want to come back to Coruscant! I don't like it, I don't want to see him!"

"Princess, you'll have to talk to your mother about that," the Mon Cala was exhausted. "Look, there's Captain Naturu, he'll be escorting you back to Alderaan. Have a good day."

The Padawan bowed with a grin. Luke instantly felt bad for forgetting his name. "Goodbye, younglings! I'll see you again next month."

Their liner was bustling, as starships always were. Luke, yearning for the warm touch, wrapped his hand up in Leia's, in a way he hadn't sought her out in years. His breath came quick and shallow, and the world slowed around him, dark spots in the corners of his eyes.

"Leia," he asked, "Why do you hate our Father so much?"

She looked at him incredulously. "Luke? No one told you?"

Her warm hand was the only thing he could feel. In his mind, he saw the news reels, the flimsiplasts, the stories Padme and R2-D2 told while he sat at their knee.

Anakin Skywalker was a hero of the republic, a former Jedi, a top-notch pilot. He was a troubled man who had to go away for doing an evil thing. He had killed criminals without a trial, denied a sentient their due process.

It was the Civil War, it was public pressure, it was the Will of the Force.

"Luke, he tried to kill our mother."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I know a lot of people were hoping for more fluff, but uh, it's not going to be that easy. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!


	3. Leia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Views expressed by certain characters do not represent the author's point of view. Check the bottom for more detail.

_One mistake changed the galaxy forever._

_"Go to Mustafar, and bring me the heads of the Confederacy leaders," Palpatine croaked, his yellow eyes luminous in the deep shadow of his dark hood. "And then, we shall destroy the Jedi once and for all. They will no longer be able to control you with their lies, my apprentice."_

_Killing the traitors was easy. Like pigs, they squealed and begged and tried to run, turning on each other. Chattel for the slaughter. Anakin couldn't remember if he laughed or if he wept as he killed them, first with clean, defined strokes, then wilder and wilder and they fled death._

_The ash from the volcanic surface seared his eyes and nose, and inside Anakin felt cold. His furnace, shattered iron, smothered out of existence._

_Was this the peace and power he had spent his whole life searching for?_

_Why did it feel so empty?_

_The Jedi had preached peace, and yet their peace couldn't calm the fires that raged within him. He found no solace in their lonesome ways, in their distant and impartial justice. He'd wanted to get his hands dirty, he wanted to feel, driven by the engine that roared in his soul, jettisoning him forward into action._

_But that wasn't power. Time and time again, he was foiled. The Force showed him his fate and he was a puppet that danced to its cold, unfeeling tune._

_Palpatine had promised him power._

_But this felt like death._

* * *

Leia met Sola before she met Padme, but she remembered both meetings vividly.

Her cousin Ryoo was their nanny, and Sola used to visit on the holidays. She was a loud, short woman with the longest hair Leia had ever seen.

At first, she didn't understand they were related. Mom was mom and dad was dad, but that year began the photographs and Leia met Mother.

At the start, they would summer at Varykino. Leia and Luke learned how to swim, fly a speeder, shoot blasters, and ride banthas. Padme told them fairy tales and stories of all her times as a Senator.

Over them hung a cloud, a great mystery, and Leia was determined to get to the bottom of it. Leia and Luke had mom and dad, and now Mother and even an Aunt and Uncle and two cousins, but if Leia understood families correctly if there was a Mother there should have been a Father-except no one would talk about him, ever. Whenever Padme would start, and she would, often, Sola, who had been supervising their visits at first and later became a regular visitor, would shoot her a sharp look. Something in Padme would wither with sadness every time. If Leia noticed, Luke definitely did; he was more perceptive in that strange way only they two could sense things.

Luke was content to let things lie, and follow things as they went, to wait, and strike when the time was right, like the water snakes snapped up fish from the river that rounded the west wing of the palace.

Leia couldn't sit and wait. She was impatient in the way of children, with the keen and sharp mind of an old soul.

In the year they turned seven, Padme moved to a villa just outside the capital of Alderaan. All their life, they had been kept apart because Dad had told her Padme was sick, and needed time to get better, and that she couldn't mind two small children.

"She seems fine to me," Leia argued, upset. She didn't believe it, didn't believe that Padme was too sick to want Luke and Leia just because talked a little slow and often lost her train of thought.

It was Sola who told her the truth, unknowingly. She had been talking to Padme's live-in nurse, a woman named Rabe.

"That bastard ruined her," Sola wept bitterly over a nearly empty bottle of wine after the two of them had finally put Padme to bed.

Luke was outside with the boat-keeper, sailing on the lake. They had been hastily told to go out after Padme, who had been spacy and slow all visit, started jerking, shaking hands dropping her delicate cup. Her eyes had rolled back, and the whites were darkly speckled red, like the bloodstone she and Luke went diving for. Spit had frothed at the corners of her mouth as she made odd, coughing whimpers, interjected with loud snorts.

That was the last Leia had seen before they were removed forcefully. Luke, being a good egg who could always tell what she wanted, had gathered up a paddle boat and moved them around the side of the estate so Leia could sneak back in.

"I don't really want to go," he'd said when she asked if he wanted to come, looking down at his hands with shiny pale eyes, "I'll stay out here in case they come looking, I'll tell them you're with me."

Leia knew he just wanted to be alone to cry, the baby, so she had let him go.

Rabe poured the last of the wine into a glass and chugged it, sighing. "She's not ruined, Sola. Just because she needs a little more help—"

"Help? That thing is not my sister, not the Padme I knew. That bastard may as well have killed her. He strangled her and his spawn finished her off, and now the brilliant woman called Amidala is as good as dead."

"Sola!" Rabe shouted, slamming her hand on the table. She was angry, her dark eyes burning. "Padme is disabled, not dead, and if you want to talk about her like that, she doesn't need you in her life."

"Will she understand me today?" Sola sneered, her pretty face ugly with despair. "Because right now, she couldn't tell me to fuck off herself. That bastard strangled the life out of her, and the first thing she did when she woke up was defend him. He broke her spirit long before he broke her neck."

Leia, from where she crouched behind the doorway, couldn't see Rabe, couldn't see the handmaiden rub Sola's back as she let out great, heaving drunken sobs. Leia had closed her eyes, and wrapped her skinny arms around her knees to stop her shaking.

"It's my fault you know," Sola wept bitterly, "I was so happy when she brought that wretched Jedi home, all those years ago. A monster with a fair face. I encouraged her, you know?"

"You couldn't have known," Rabe sighed, "you couldn't have known what Anakin would do."

Leia had stopped listening then, but the secret knowledge weighed on her.

The next morning, Luke and Leia were pulled aside by Rabe, who explained the situation much more clearly.

"You've been told before that your mother couldn't take care of you because she was sick," Rabe had sighed. "You've just seen why."

The words washed over Leia like a wave— a long time ago (seven years ago, Leia mentally supplied) Padme was hurt, and her brain was deprived of oxygen, so now it didn't work quite right. Sometimes, the electricity in her brain would fire all at once overwhelm it, and she would have seizures— the fit that had so terrified Luke and Leia. It was why she was so tired, and couldn't run with Luke around the house, and why she spoke slowly sometimes, early in the morning or late in the day.

Luke had gone to Padme on the settee and held her hand until she woke, offering her a warm and sincere smile, even though she knew he was sad.

But Leia? Leia was angry, because as much as she loved Mama and Dad, now that she knew Padme existed, she couldn't help but wonder what might it have been like. Raised by her biological mother, she wouldn't be the pitied orphan in the palace.

All those years, angry and ashamed because she thought her mother did not want her. Leia had been stolen from Padme as surely as Padme had been stolen from Sola.

And Anakin Skywalker was the one who did it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who have a disability are people, period. They have a right to live, have children, and deserve respect and equity. The galaxy a long time ago, far, far away is imperfect. Don't fucking flame me.
> 
> YellowWomanontheBrink,
> 
> November 18, 2020
> 
> 10:15 PM


	4. Padme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I swear this wasn't supposed to be a whole ass fic.

Padme didn't have to be Force sensitive to tell that Luke was bothered. Both of the children were disturbed, but when Padme had agreed to supervised visitation, she knew what she was sending them into. Every night since she had signed the papers permitting one hour of public, supervised visitation, she was tormented, questioning if she had done the right thing.

Anakin had been writing them letters for years. It was his only luxury in solitary.

Padme had never given the letters to either of her children, but she didn't read them either. They were words from father to daughter and son. She had to protect them, and keep away whatever madness had struck him when he chose to kneel at the feet of Palpatine. When they were older, when they could take the measure of his character safely, she would give them his words.

Anakin wrote her too, but only years later. Obi-Wan had shamefully confessed that he'd allowed Anakin to think she was dead for the three years he'd been in jail. Whatever Anakin had wanted to say to her, she hadn't wanted to hear it. The problem was, she knew if she spoke to him, she'd forgive him. Their love was madness; for her children, she had to protect herself from going back.

Padme was strong in every way that mattered, but Anakin Skywalker was her weakness.

"Love?" she called him from the other room, dismissing her handmaiden with an idle wave of the hand. "What's wrong?"

It was their week with her. Padme had fought long and hard to have even that much, after her senate bar had been stripped. Recovering from her stroke had been even longer, and though she lived normally now, it had been a fight to even be allowed visitation. She was so grateful to Bail for having taken in her children—that young, they would have fared fine among the Jedi, but in her heart, she could never dismiss Anakin's words; the fears and insecurities he had disclosed to her from being mistreated by the Council. It was hard to know what was true, and what was grooming.

All the work she had done for the Republic was not enough to attest to her fitness to parent to the family court of Naboo, especially not against Bail and Breha Organa, who the new administration admired. And Sola hadn't helped.

Sola couldn't see past the weakness of her flesh, she couldn't see that the physical impairments caused by the eclamptic stroke had done nothing to ruin her sharp mind. She'd had pre-eclampsia and had not known it; Anakin and Obi-Wan had battled over her seizing body. The stroke on the birthing bed had nearly finished her off. Even after Padme had relearned how to walk, talk, and function almost entirely normally, Sola saw a feeble, helpless, burden, and resented her and loved her in equal measure for it.

That custody battle after Anakin's trial was hardly the first time the system had been set against her. Everyone she had thought was her ally had revealed their true nature. Obi-Wan, Sola, and Breha had all testified against her. No one could prove that she had ever done anything that proved that she was undeserving of custody of her children, and so it had been settled with 40/60 custodial rights and half cycle visitation. The court had refused to vacate the adoption. Bail had pulled all the right strings and had the Jedi in his corners, she was grateful that she won even that much.

It was exhausting.

Luke crept in on quiet feet, his pale eyes lamplight in his thin, fine face. He crawled onto the couch and lay his head on her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder. His chest pressed under her arm and she could feel his heart beating, rabbit-fast against hers.

"Leia told me that...Father tried to kill you," Luke said, voice even but terribly close to breaking. "Is it true?"

Though he was much too old for such things, Padme gathered Luke close to her. He did not resist, and laid his head on her breast. His eyes, like Anakin's only in color, pensively considered her.

"Where did Leia hear that?" She dodged his question, but was not surprised.

Leia could be a tempestuous child, but she was not hateful, especially not towards strangers. Padme had been careful not to color the children's perceptions of their father, for even imprisoned he was as controversial as he had been free. For her to hate Anakin so fiercely, and not even know him...

"I don't know," Luke lied, averting his gaze. Padme didn't press, and pursed her lips in thought. How much of the truth should she tell?

Anakin had been a living lie detector, but even he could be fooled, manipulated, and groomed. Could she do the same to her own child? No, she decided. They deserved the truth, as much of it as she could give.

"Whatever Leia thinks she knows, she cannot know it all," Padme decided, "And I think you two are old enough now, to understand. Go get your sister, and I'll explain as much as I can."

He hesitated. "She's really mad about it. About...you making her have to go see him."

"You're not her messenger," Padme smiled sadly and kissed Luke's forehead, "And we'll talk more about the visitation together."

He smiled unsurely and ran off to fetch his sister, and Padme sunk agonizingly back into her thought. Perhaps she was wrong to testify for Anakin's parole. Perhaps she was wrong to approve visitation. Perhaps she was wrong, for not fighting harder for her children, for not dragging out custody battles for ten more years until Luke and Leia were Luke and Leia Skywalker, and not Organa, as they should have been.

Perhaps she was wrong for the tiny well of bitterness in her heart, that Bail had used his political influence to expedite his own adoption of _her_ children, that he had presumed her as good as dead when she was in a coma, that he had pushed her to give up her custodial rights, her right to be called mother.

"Breha has been their mother for two years," he'd pled before she took him to court, "Would you wrench that away from them for your own satisfaction?"

She hadn't even been given the opportunity to try. She'd woken up to a hellish world where everything was pain, her children were no longer her own, and her husband slated for execution for crimes he might've done, not things he'd actually done.

Luke and Leia came back in, thought Leia hesitated in the doorway, poised but slightly ashamed of her conduct. For the past three weeks, the tantrums had been unending. The end of the month was arriving, and the visit to the Coruscant loomed over them like a shroud.

"Come, sit by me," she patted the fluffy sectional with a smile, and the two of them were immediately put at ease when they saw she wasn't mad. "I know this is hard, but you can be honest with me, I promise. I won't be mad, or upset, and truly, if you do not want to see Anakin, you won't have to."

Leia relaxed even more when Padme did not call Anakin their father, while Luke sagged almost in disappointment, and Padme internally sighed.

"Your father," and now Leia scowled as Luke brightened up, "was a deeply troubled man. A good man, but a troubled man. He was a Jedi for many years, and a good one, but he made— we made— many, many bad decisions. Most children have to wait until they are much older to learn that parents are people. And that we make mistakes."

"He tried to kill you Mother!" Leia said, "it's not like he broke a vase or, or stole a speeder or something!"

"Tell me what you think you know," Padme pulled Leia to her feet and unbraided her waist long hair, running fingers through it until she began to relax. "And I'll tell you if you're right."

"Why not tell us everything?" Luke asked.

"We're not babies, we can handle it," Leia added.

"I can't tell you everything, because I don't know everything," Padme admitted, "Some things, only your Father knows. And I would rather you have only the truth, and not a certain truth."

They looked at each other, light and dark eyes meeting, and nodded together in certainty.

"I married your father when he was only a padawan—"

"A jedi student," Luke explained to Leia, who had looked confused at the word. She was utterly disinterested in the ways of the Force. Obi-Wan despaired for her.

"Yes," she murmured, "Just before the Clone Wars started. No one else knew. It was only for us. But sentients don't live in a vacuum. And war began to take a toll on us both. When you two came, I was sick."

Padme had been terrified to seek out care. She hadn't told Anakin, but in his nearly year long absence there had been attempts on her life per usual, and the diplomatic missions had been unending. Every conversation was espionage, and every negotiation ended in conflict. It seemed peace was hopeless, and in a manufactured conflict where one puppet-master pulled both strings, it truly was.

"Why didn't you go see an EmDee droid?" Luke wrung his hands nervous. "There's a bajillion on Coruscant!"

"It prescribed bed rest, and during the wartime that was in short supply for us all," Padme sighed. "Your Father was powerful, you know, and he knew it. Somehow, he knew I was sick. He was afraid I would die. He would do anything to stop it."

"That's not what I've heard!" Leia seemed almost worried, her brow furrowed between her closed eyes.

"Were you sick because of us?" Luke's voice was small.

"No!" Padme shook her head vehemently, squeezing Luke tight. "Sometimes things just happen. I had been sick all through my pregnancy, and no one knew. Your father saw the worst case scenario, and tried his hardest to prevent it, but he went about it the wrong way, asking for help from the wrong people. He's a good man who made bad choices, and now he's dealing with the consequences of them. He'll deal with them forever."

"But what did he _do?"_ Leia was not content to be coddled, and pushed away Padme's hands from her half-braided hair, turning around and facing her mother. "I heard—"

"No hearsay Leia," Padme sighed, and pulled the little girl onto her lap. Her children had grown up so quickly— and the visitation was never enough. She missed them more than she saw them, and to split their time in three— if it was right for children to know their father, why did this feel so cruel?

"I was sick, and no one knew, and we were driven off a precipice we didn't know we stood on," Padme whispered hoarsely.

Padme had been young and naive. She thought love was enough.

Anakin had come back from Mustafar, wild-eyed and raving, speaking nonsense. His presence was cold. She'd stopped him at the doors of the Senate chambers, begged him to stop as he went to meet up with the 501st for whatever task Palpatine had set him on. Then, she hadn't known it had been genocide. But she knew had gone to Mustafar, heard democracy die, and then Master Yoda and Obi-Wan had come—

Master Yoda took on the master, and Obi-Wan the apprentice— his _apprentice, the Sith apprentice, ANAKIN—_

Right there in the Senate building, abandoned after democracy's disbanding, and Padme had been begging him to stop, begging him to deny what Obi-Wan accused him of, because the Anakin she knew…

Well, the Anakin she knew had killed children, and hated himself for it, lived to atone for it, not reveled in it. He didn't anticipate the slaughter.

She had stopped him, told him to come away with her, to leave everything behind. Her life's work lay in ashes behind her, and it was obvious the Jedi stood against him like he always feared (to send a dear friend who had already betrayed him once to kill him was as thoughtless as it was cruel), and at that point, she didn't care if the galaxy burned if only Anakin would stop and come back to her.

And then Obi-Wan had opened his _stupid mouth_ and everything fell apart. She was choking, Anakin choked her, and everything went black. When she woke next, the EmDee's black visor at the Jedi Temple stood over her, and healers rushed around her. The air smelt like blood and burnt plastisteel. Her vision had blacked out, fading in and out of focus and there was so much pain. She had never been in pain like that, and never wanted to again. It was too late for an epidural, so she'd pushed when the Healers told her to, muttering the entire time.

One child—

Two—

A boy, and a girl.

"Mother?" Luke was shaking her, "Are you alright?"

"I will be," she smiled at her son, and when he hugged her back, her smile grew and became more genuine than sad. "Leia," she sighed. "You deserve the answers to your questions. You both do. That's why I want you to visit him. I've been asking these questions for ten years. Whatever Sola says, I don't think your Father tried to kill me."

If she had been anywhere other than the capital of the galaxy…she would be dead.

"I thought you had the right to know him," Padme's eyes welled with tears as her voice thickened. "Bail has been good to you, but you deserve to know your Father and decide whether you want him in your life. He made his choices, he has to live with them. So no Leia, I won't force you to go."

It wasn't what she wanted to say. She loved Anakin, and would defend him with her dying breath. She loved him even when they were apart. She loved him when she blackmailed him into pleading guilty.

Nine years ago, her children had been taken from her without a choice. Luke and Leia had been loving enough to accept her as their mother anyway. Padme Amidala was not a hypocrite; she would give Anakin the opportunity, and leave the decision in her children's hands.

* * *

_"_ _Master Kenobi would know what happened," Luke told Leia when they got back to Alderaan._

_Leia wrinkled her nose. "Master Kenobi? What does he have to do with this?" Leia only knew him as their father's occasional visitor. Luke, who had been interested in the stories of the Clone Wars and Jedi, knew him better; he was always at his heels whenever he came to visit._

_Luke shrugged. "Well, he knew Father. He taught him, in fact. That's what he told me when he asked if I wanted to join the Jedi."_

_Leia pulled up sharp and whirled around, grabbing Luke by his shoulder. "When did Master Kenobi ask you to join the Jedi?"_

_He tapped his cheek in thought. "Well, it was a really long time ago. I think it was the year we met Mother. I didn't really know what it meant."_

_"_ _Well, I'm glad you said no," she huffed, "If you were a Jedi, you couldn't be my brother. Who else would steal the speeders when we sneak out?"_

_Luke laughed, the first genuine smile on his face in what felt like forever. "Leia, I could be a stranger from across the galaxy and I'd still be your brother." Tucking his hands into the sleeves of his robe, he straightened his spine and raised his chin. "It is the will of the Force, young one," he imitated the posh accent of Master Kenobi._

_Leia punched him in the shoulder, but couldn't raise her hands fast enough to hide her own smile. "You're ridiculous."_

_"_ _You're nosy, but that never stopped you," Luke said dramatically, relieved that Leia wasn't in a foul mood...for once._

_"_ _Well, you're helping, so you're just as bad," Leia retorted. "How do we contact Master Kenobi?"_

_They considered each other. "Artoo would know."_

_Their resolve decided, they set off to find their Mother's wayward navigation droid._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...don't have anything to say. Leave comments, they feed me. (^:<
> 
> YellowWomanontheBrink
> 
> November 29, 2020
> 
> 10:17 PM


	5. Leia (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is huge. I write this on my phone when I'm in my feels, and completely forgot to update.

_“Please state your name for the Senate,” Mon Mothma was presiding over the trial as the Executor of Justice._

_It had been a long wait, and now, Obi-Wan would get his satisfaction, he thought grimly. He had little faith in politicians, but the democratic process moved slowly, surely, and was difficult to confound unless one sat at the center of the web itself._

_Palpatine had been a monster of a spider, but once the military had seized his comm unit, it had been possible, but not easy to track down his puppets and put them on trial for treason. If his wretched Hands didn’t reach beyond the grave and execute them themselves. Obi-Wan himself had put them both down, one after the other._

_After Anakin’s betrayal, he had no mercy left for the Sith. Where once he might’ve spared someone who was faltering, now he cut them down—and recovered the bodies as well. He would not make the same mistake twice._

_Now, the Senate had a thousand new faces, some former Confederacy leaders, some new representatives of liberated colonies._

_“My name is Anakin Skywalker,” Anakin stood tall and proud in the center of the well._

_“Anakin Skywalker, you stand accused of crimes against sentients, murder in the first degree for the unlawful execution of Count Dooku of Serenno, Viceroy Nute Gunray, Chairman San Hill, Foreman Wat Tambor, Shu Mai, Passel Argente. The prosecution requests that these crimes be enhanced to war crimes, due to the fact that these alleged victims were prisoners of war, and you violated parole by executing them after lawful surrender. You stand accused of conspiracy to commit genocide. How do you plead?”_

_“Not guilty, Your Honor,” Anakin stood alone, defending himself. Oh, there had been counsellors galore across the galaxy salivating to represent the Hero with No Fear, but he had turned them all down._

_They wouldn’t even have to go through this farce if it weren’t for Padme, he thought bitterly. The Jedi Order would have had his head two years ago._

_At least the Senate had allowed the Jedi to imprison him. No penal colony could hold Anakin Skywalker against his will._

_They had argued, and fought, and screamed, but Padme had not budged— justice had been perverted once when Ahsoka was on trial, and it was only due process that had saved her life. She would not allow her husband of six years to submit to being tried by the Order._

_“You’re not impartial,” she had bit out, finally losing her temper, “Only four concil members survived. It wouldn’t be justice, it would be revenge, and I am so sick of revenge. I compromised my morals once, and look what happened. I won’t help you kill him. Republic justice, Kenobi, or you can hold him until he escapes, and he will escape.”_

_“Because you’ll help him?” He seethed._

_“Because you can’t hold him forever. And I can make sure he submits to Republic justice.”_

_“Why should I believe you?” He gestured at her neck, “I’m sure you’ve seen how well Anakin listens to you.”_

_Her face blanked, the statuesque facade of the Queen of Naboo that had never fooled him. “I don't have anything else to say to you, Kenobi. Trust me, or don’t, but the Jedi won’t keep him to kill him.”_

_Padme and Anakin had been a well matched set; the two of them always got their way. She pulled all the strings she had left to pull to get Anakin’s trial shifted from the Jedi Council to the Republic. The worst thing about it all was that Padme was sincere. She genuinely believed that Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with No Fear, would be found guilty of war crimes by a Grand Council._

_The days of the trial dragged on and on. Obi-Wan had to testify; he and the Jedi Council had bound together and forced their way into Anakin’s mind to witness his slaughter of the Confederacy leaders, the first task given to him by his wretched Sith master. They surrendered, and begged for their lives, but Anakin had cut them down anyway, the power of the Dark Side coursing through him._

_But hatred had blinded him, he realized, as the trial went on. He had forgotten; Anakin was merciful at the wrong times and a terrible judge of character, but he was as brilliant as he was powerful. He had charisma, and he was handsome, and for five years he had been the hero of the Republic for all the Jedi had detested him. He had liberated as many Confederate holdings from the Banking, Trading, and Commerce unions as he had Republic planets from the droids. He spoke well, and when he told the story, nothing was his fault._

_And the worst thing was, he truly believed it. The Force made it so no one could lie to Anakin but himself. When Anakin believed something, it was easy to agree with him, so fervent was the power of his passion._

_Obi-Wan invited himself to Padme’s room at her rehab, face as red as his hair with anger. Though his expression was serene, as was his measured stride, his displeasure was evident._

_Padme was on the bar, walking slowly, a mirialan orderly beside her. Her waist length hair hung down her back in a heavy braid. She startled when she noticed Obi-Wan quietly seething (trying and failing to release his anger into the Force)._

_“Master...Jedi,” she said, using the title to carefully distance them. The aid pulled her down into the wheeled chair behind her. “Thank you Anata.”_

_“Would you like to take this to your suite, Senator Amidala?” the now named Anata offeredm desperate to spare herself the tension between the two of them._

_When she looked at him, he nodded, and she hummed in approval. The orderly led them to Padme’s room, then wheeled in a small cart with a carafe of chai and a plate full of berries, then quickly made herself scarce. Buying time to search for words, Padme poured him tea._

_“What brings you here, Master Jedi?” Padme said, each word careful, her voice as mellifluous as ever._

_“Anakin, of course,” he sighed bitterly, “Are you proud, Amidala? That you saved your own would-be murderer? He would have killed you Padme. Did you believe his attachment to you would make him do the right thing? When has it ever stopped him from acting on evil?” Obi-Wan pinched his nose, immediately feeling guilty. He was frustrated with the situation...and also with Padme, since it was her fault this was a problem in the first place. The Jedi could have cut off his head two years ago and been done with it all._

_She stirred her tea, her dark eyes gazing calmly into his own. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she said. “Anakin always told me the Jedi distrusted him, you know. He thought you all hated him. When we first married, how he would despair...I told him to have faith, and he did. And then, there came a point where he stopped talking to me about it.” She sipped, never once looking away from his pale eyes. “He was right, if even you can turn on him so quickly.”_

_“ He planned to kill us all.”_

_“Palpatine planned to kill the Jedi.”_

_“Anakin was an accomplice!”_

_“Did he put those chips in the clone’s brains? Did he march on the Temple? No. He was driven by selfish fear and despair. He thought he had no place among the people who raised him any longer. To him, the Jedi had no principles anymore— a Temple full of hypocrites and deceivers.”_

_She stood, a fire in her dark eyes all on the Senate floor knew to fear. “But Anakin was wrong. The Jedi are good. Misled, and corrupted by war and fatigue and tragedy, just like Anakin was—” she held up a hand to stop Obi-Wan’s angry retort. “What you must do, Master Jedi, if you dream of having any place in this new Republic, is trust the process. Put the power back in the hands of the people, disenfranchised by the Sith. Stay true to yourself, and the values of the organization you dedicated your life to—”_

_“You cannot talk circles around me, Amidala,” Obi-Wan raised his chin. “Save that for the fools in the Senate. You know what is right—”_

_“Who am I to pass judgement on any one man? Or do you agree with Annie, the boy you raised, who you now claim you despise? A victim of circumstance as much as I?”_

_“What—”_

_“He hated the idea of a trial by jury,” she smiled sadly, and Obi-Wan could understand, just a little, why Anakin had fallen so deeply for this woman. She had the wisdom of a Master. “He was a totalitarian at heart, and believed that such a thing as a benevolent dictator could ever exist.”_

_“And who better than himself as the head?” Obi-Wan scoffed._

_“No, he admired Palpatine. He spoke often of you as well. Once, he asked me what I would do with absolute power,” her wistful smile twisted into a grimace, “I said I’d establish a democracy before the power corrupted me. He could never think in the big picture.”_

_“Unless it suited him.”_

_“But I’m not here to discuss his flaws or his virtues, Master Jedi,” she said cooly, “I know them all, and evidently better than you do. I need to speak to him.”_

_“So you can plan to run away together?”_

_“If you want Anakin to die in prison,” she ignored him, “You will let me speak to him before closing statements tomorrow morning. Go arrange what you must, but I need an hour of visitation.”_

_“Not happening,” he bit out, “You’ve arranged his exoneration. The Council won’t find him guilty. Reap the rewards of your actions.”_

_Her jaw worked, and Obi-Wan relished in her cold anger in the Force. She was ashamed. For all her growing lack of faith in the Senate, she’d truly thought that they would find the Hero With No Fear guilty of the obvious crimes he’d committed._

_“Then tell him this, while you torment him, as I know you do,” she chewed her lip, “Tell him I know what bones lie in the desert...and that was a crime he can’t spin to his favor, the penalty for which is execution. And if he won’t take a plea, I’ll take him to trial for that, and I will prosecute him myself.”_

_Feeble, thinned out and weaker than she had ever been before, Padme sat in her low settee like a queen, her hands trembling so badly tea splashed out of her cup onto the plate._

_Obi-Wan could feel her dull horror and pure sorrow in the Force, and for the first time in two years, he could look beyond his own pain. The Jedi Order had lost so much, but they had prevailed. Many were able to escape the clones, and they were no longer pressed into service in the Republic Army and Navy. The children still lived, and another generation of Jedi would flourish, though Obi-Wan knew in his heart he would never take another padawan again._

_What did Padme have? No husband, no children, no career...and she had strength enough to stick to the principles of democracy she had fought for her entire life, only for it to fail her when she most needed it._

_“Please leave, Master Jedi,” her voice was wan, “I’m afraid I’m very tired.”_

_Without even a goodbye, Obi-Wan left her sitting there, head bowed. She looked like a broken woman._

_When Obi-Wan told Anakin what Padme had said, he’d paled, looking like a sickly bleached skeleton, and refused to speak another word. He was silent all through transport._

_The next morning, before the Senate and sundry, Anakin Skywalker pled guilty to the homicides. As part of his plea, the enhanced sentence for war crimes was dismissed, and he was allowed to serve each of the twenty-five year sentences concurrently— eligible for parole after ten years._

_The charges for conspiracy to commit genocide were dropped, and for that reason alone, Obi-Wan could not let go of his bitterness. Even as Anakin slowly went mad in the belly of Coruscant, he hated him, and wished that he would burn._

* * *

Artoo-Detoo was a treasure trove of information— when Luke was apt enough at slicing to find it. Though the old navigation unit was long out of commission, supplanted by fancier and newer models decades ahead of him, it was still functional, and in fact acted as the navigational unit for Mother’s private cruiser.

Sometime in the past, Artoo had taken some heavy hits that had dislodged its processors from internal memory storage. Luke knew that Artoo was capable of storing new memories, but was unable to retrieve them— but, oddly enough, it remembered the process of storing. So, Artoo was continuously storing, could remember that it’d stored things, but couldn’t recall what it had stored. As a result, unlike most droids that were designed to interact with sentients, like Threepio, Artoo wasn’t periodically wiped.

Not that Mother ever wiped Threepio. When Leia asked if it would make him any less annoying, Padme had laughed and said that his personality was a quirk built into the very foundations of his code. Six-year old Leia had taken that as a challenge to try to teach the droid to be less intrusively oblivious. She’d failed, much to her chagrin.

Artoo was much cleverer than whatever knucklehead had written up the code for Threepio, and tricked out like a classic speeder to boot. Luke’s binary was still rough, but it was better than Leia’s, which was nonexistent. Threepio was so easy to trick that it wasn’t worth bargaining with him, but Artoo was smart enough to bribe, and versus the two of them, utterly helpless. Leia had the smooth tongue, and Luke the skill to back up whatever offer his twin made. 

The two of them snuck out to the hangar where the Naboo cruiser that took them on their monthly visits to their sperm donor was docked. Luke was excited, and completely unafraid. Leia wasn’t nervous, exactly, but she felt unsettled, and shaken. 

That was the sensation. Shaken, like someone had quickly spun her around, put her down, and she just hadn’t gotten her bearings yet. 

Leia hadn’t known that Master Kenobi had tried to take away her brother. Mother had always been incredibly cool towards him, emitting not exactly dislike, but the careful distance a woman adopts around a strange man, even though it was clear that she knew him very well. Lots of people were afraid of the Jedi, even in their much reduced state, so Leia hadn’t thought too much about it at the time, but now that she knew that she could’ve lost her twin, her other half, to that strange, ascetic religion, Leia couldn’t fight off the anxiety that welled in her. There were stories of how the Jedi led the Republic to victory over the Separatists, how the Great Negotiator himself had bargained the current peace agreements. 

She wouldn’t know. An overwhelming majority of Jedi now were fully cloistered. Force sensitive children were taken up until the age of 6, and most never left the Temple on Coruscant again. 

Even though Master Kenobi was a fairly regular visitor, every visit he was mostly preoccupied with Luke. Leia was always busy, at her school clubs or young diplomats meetings, or spending time with Mama or traveling with her coterie. It was as if her schedule was organized around making sure she never ran into the old Jedi, lest he be intrigued by her too. Even when other Jedi visited for diplomatic purposes, Leia never saw them. 

Luke was excited, struggling to decipher Artoo’s rapidfire whirs and beeps. 

“Leia,” Luke grinned, and Leia’s heart raced with anticipation, because she knew what that look meant. “Artoo says he can do us one better than just a holocall.”

“What’s better than a holocall?” Leia asked, “It’s not as if Master Kenobi’s going to fly over here from Galactic City just for a chat.”

“He can get us into the Temple,” Luke patted his scored dome, “He says he used to navigate Jedi Y-Wings!”

Leia’s eyebrows raised nearly into her hairline. “I don’t mean to disparage Artoo, but breaking into the Jedi Temple is a lot different than hacking a commline.”

Sneaking off to Coruscant was an easy, if pricy commute; there was even a direct hyperlane shuttle linking the Alderaan system to the Galactic City interim port. But the Temple was an ancient bastion, and a famous landmark that could be easily identified from orbit, along with the Senate and the 500 Republica.

“Luke,” Leia asked, “Did he really say he could break us into the Jedi Temple?” 

Artoo was fresh, if Threepio’s scandalized remarks meant anything. His long-term memory was shot. Would he even be able to devise such a clever break-in? Leia was all up for a little bit of fun— she’d traveled the Core worlds extensively with her coterie, more than Luke had, and that was why she was so hesitant. Coruscant was dangerous.

“Well, not exactly,” Luke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “But, when I mentioned Master Kenobi, he let me search his databanks and a route got pulled up from his hub. Look, it’s a space _and_ planetary navigation route!”   
  


Artoo whirred something loudly, _angrily_ and Luke and Leia met each other’s eyes over its head and winced. Luke bit his lip in thought.

“Look at this Leia,” he muttered, “I think...it goes below the upper levels.”  
  


“Of Coruscant?” she gaped, and sure enough, there before them lay a secret route into the Jedi Temple through the depths of the underbelly of the capital. 

“We can do this,” Luke’s eyes raced across the plans, “All we need is a small enough ship— _Lady’s Tears_ will be perfect! And it’s old enough to be fitted with a retro astronavigator-- _ow!”_

Artoo buzzed smugly and pulled back the mini taser that had popped out of a small hatch on the bottom. 

“Don’t worry.” Leia grinned at Luke, “ _I_ don’t think you’re retro, Artoo. Luke’s head is full of bolts, not brains.”

A pleased beep, and Luke’s chagrined look of annoyance only deepened Leia’s smirk.

A tendril of fear curled in her belly. Not at the flight; it wasn’t the furthest Leia had gone, nor the most dangerous, and it certainly wasn’t the first time she’d traveled on her own or with just Luke. No, what scared her was the fact that they were going to Coruscant to visit the Jedi. 

Ever since they were young, they ‘d had an interest in her brother. She had vague memories of Master Kenobi, but she could remember the feeling he awoke in her, the things that sixth sense of hers said. Obi-Wan Kenobi was a warrior, and in his eyes, there was a hungry desire for Luke. Desire, and something else— not quite fear, not quite love. 

Luke obviously admired him, and Leia didn’t know enough about him to persuade him otherwise. He had so few friends on Alderaan; when he wasn’t with Leia, he was often off on his own, in the hangar with the mechanics or flying out to Mother’s estate in the countryside.

He could sense her unease, and his pale eyes shined with concern. They were the same color as _his_ , but the eyes of her twin were comforting; a gaze she knew better than the lines on her palms, an open book she’d read front to back and loved so well she knew all the words. Anakin Skywalker’s eyes were the eyes of a man on the edge. That pale gaze pierced, seeing all, but inscrutable. 

“We don’t have to do this,” he said, “I’m sure we could do a call too, if you don’t want to go to Coruscant. Could you find a holocomm number, Artoo?”

But her feelings told her going to Coruscant wasn’t wrong. All her apprehension was about meeting the enigma, Master Kenobi.

“I want to go,” she said, voice short with anxiety. “But are you sure Master Kenobi would know anything?”

“Father was his padawan,” Luke said, “And he’s never lied to me before?” 

“Don’t be silly,” Leia couldn’t stop herself from pacing, her hands drifting up to caress her waist-long braids, “Everyone lies.”

“Not Master Kenobi,” Luke sighed, “Even if he can be really confusing sometimes. He used to talk about him, you know.”

“Talk about who?”

“Father. He’d tell me stories about Father, and talk about how I was just like him. He’d tell me about the things they did as Jedi together.”

Leia wrinkled her nose in distaste. Luke wasn’t anything like that man. Luke was sweet and softhearted, a little reclusive and sometimes impulsive. 

“You’re not anything like that murderer,” she hissed, “You’re too good for him, Luke, and I wish I could talk sense into you about this.”

“You have your Dad, Leia,” he bit back, unusually sharp, “I want mine.”

And then, Leia knew he wouldn’t say anything more on that. She had promised she would try. 

“I’m sorry,” she grabbed his hand and held it tightly in hers. “I’m just afraid.”

“Leia? Afraid? Two words that never go together,” Luke rewarded her with a small smile. 

“If I lost you, I’d be afraid,” the words wrenched themselves from her throat, “Being the son of a _former_ Jedi won’t make you one. I don’t want you to talk to Master Kenobi thinking he can make you a Jedi, or something.” 

“Don’t be silly,” he smiled warmly, and pulled her into a tight hug. His cheeks warmed hers, his breath by her ear. “I already said no, didn’t I? I just want to know the truth…”

“And what makes you think that Master Kenobi would give it to you?” Leia pulled him down, and they sat side by side by Artoo, who whirred loudly and spun him dome. 

“Actually,” Luke gulped, “I don’t think we should use this map...like that.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“If it goes under Coruscant… do you think we could get into the prison part of the Temple?” Luke held his hands up, palm open to stave off Leia’s sharp retort. “No, seriously! Think about it— Father will never tell us the truth during the supervised visits. There’s not enough time.”

“I wasn’t going to say no,” Leia sniffed, though that had been her gut reaction. They had been on three supervised visits so far. They were always in public places. Leia had had to muster up all of her stubbornness after the first one. If she was forced to go, well, she wasn’t forced to talk. But Skywalker had a way of provoking her, drawing out her words while juggling a vibrantly involved conversation with Luke, about anything at all. The man had a broad, if somewhat outdated and cynical knowledge of just about everything, and it was infuriating. 

They had not yet discussed his crimes.

“Of course he wouldn’t admit to anything in front of the guards,” Leia realized, “Maybe they’ll revoke his parole; throw him right back in jail with an even longer sentence he can’t dodge. Maybe...they’ll even execute him.”

“Do they still do that?” Luke’s pale eyes were wide. 

“Not for years, and he’d have to be convicted by a Grand Council…”

“Even more reason,” Luke said, “We’ll sneak in at night, and while he’s in his cell, he’ll have to tell us the truth.”

“Yes,” Leia murmured. 

They sat in a heavy silence while Luke got up and extracted the route from Artoo’s databasen onto a flimsiplast. He chattered reassurances at the droid, who warbled, beeped, and whirred a litany of censure. When he finished, he called her name and she looked up, startled. He felt bright, but anxious, and Leia was sure she felt like a storm; she felt so many things she wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. It was anger and fear all twisted up, and frustration, because at the heart of it all, Leia didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to be the daughter of a convict. She didn’t care, and inside, she even hated Padme a little for forcing her to have to know this _man_ that she said she loved, this man who tried to kill her. 

It was sick, and Padme’s hopeless devotion made Leia hate her, even though she had only ever been kind, and never lied, except by omission. 

Obviously she didn’t care for them, if she was content to defend her would-be murderer and give up her children, only to change her mind and forcefully insert herself back into their lives. She’d ruined everything.

Much to her horror, tears welled up in her eyes and she sniffled, trying to hurriedly rub them away before Luke noticed, but it was too late. 

“LEIA!” he dropped to his knees beside her and gathered her up, “Don’t cry! We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, really. We can call Master Kenobi instead. I know you don’t care for Father…”

But I do, was unsaid between them.

“He’s not my father,” Leia bit out. Luke kept calling _him_ that in front of her, as if that would suddenly sway her into caring about the man who had tried to kill Padme, who was locked up for murder, who was evil. 

“But do you care for me?” he ignored her mutter, “Because I’m scared, Leia. I think I could do it alone, but I don’t want to. I want you with me.”

“I don’t know why she had to do this to us,” Leia was crying now, and she couldn’t stop herself even if she tried, “I was happy before, even when I knew what he’d done. I thought he was just going to stay away, and die in jail, and I would never have to think about it because even though Padme got hurt there was some justice! But there’s not, and, and she still _loves_ him even though he tried to _kill_ her, and—” she gasped, a wretched, snotty sound.   
  


“It’s all right,” Luke whispered, “Forget it.”

“But—”

“Forget it,” he pressed her face into his chest. “I can wait.” He heaved a sigh, “I can wait until you’re ready to do this with me.”

_Even if it’s never,_ the thought brushed hers so gently Leia wondered if she even heard the words, but it didn’t matter, because she could see the sincerity of the promise written on his face. Though she knew she was right, the guilt crept up her throat anyway. 

“Let’s at least call Master Kenobi,” she cleared her throat. “And then, we could go from there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess this is technically a WIP? Leave a comment if you like!

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment on your way out if you liked it. 😅 I will continue this story in a series. 
> 
> Also, unbetaed and unedited.


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